Angry Bag Sold Separately

Right now, as I write this post, I am hundreds of miles above the earth in an airplane on my way to Chicago. I’m going to Chicago because I am on a leadership committee that is a part of my denomination (American Baptist Churches, USA). I am going to Chicago because I am very involved in my denomination.

My involvement in denominational life ironic for a number of reasons.

My age – 39 - I come from the generation of people who are naturally skeptical of institutions. I’m told that we do not trust institutions and I think there is a good amount of truth to that statement. We (Gen Xers) have seen governments lie, we have witnessed heroes fall, and churches fail. Why would I think there is any hope in an institution that had its heyday in the 1950s?

The current trends – In a recent podcast I have mentioned that denominations are, on the whole, actively dying. The institutions of the past are becoming the festering carcasses spread across Christendom that Francis Wayland predicted they would be (way back in the early 1800s). They are struggling, they are scared, and I am very much aware of it.

My frustrations – I’m not the smartest person involved in church life (I just like to tell myself that I am), but I know that we are going to have to do things differently, and when I say differently I mean at a theoretical not just methodological level. A methodological difference would be using a power-point screen instead of a hymnal during hymns (or songs depending on what you call them). The same end is reached, people sing. A theoretical difference would question the purpose of music in worship, how it helps and how it hinders. It would go deeper and ask what is the purpose of worship. I say all of this to point out that the rapid decay of denominations demands a theoretical level of analysis and change and the majority of pastors and lay people are only willing to consider the methodical analysis and changes. This is frustrating not because I have the answers (I don’t), but because the questions I hear people asking are often going the wrong direction. The conversation is mired in the technical. I often want to leave meetings with an angry bag.

Interlude – THE ANGRY BAG™

The angry bag™ is a state of the art device wherein one takes a bag, preferably paper (it is safer than plastic and better for the environment), carefully takes a big breath and then before exhaling places the bag over the mouth. With the bag placed over the mount the person then lets out all of the air in a loud, primal scream. This scream can be one long tone or can be released in short bursts of rage. The individual then quickly twists the top of the bag holding in all of the air and rage and then proceeds to smash it as hard as possible against one hand causing a loud popping sound. This is the angry bag™

So why am I going to this meeting and why am I involved with my denomination? Really for many of the same reasons that I am involved with a local church – as far as I can tell it is the best way to do the work of Christ in the world. Churches need to work together. Churches need to support each other. Churches need to take risks with each other. Just as individuals need to be a part of a church (again, see my recent podcast for more on this), churches need to be a part of something bigger then themselves to be better communities of Christ. I really do believe this. So I’m going to these meetings that will last about 25 hours, see no more than a hotel lobby and maybe a quick peak of Chicago in the ride from the airport to the hotel and back again, and then fly back home, tired and probably a little frustrated. Yet I am glad to do it because I really do believe it is a way for all of us to be better Christians, and until I come up with something better I am fully in.

Good thing I packed 2-dozen angry bags™.

The Goldilocks Method of Doing Church

Papacy is in the air – more than I like, so I am not going to write about the Papacy, the problems with the Catholic hierarchy, or anything else Cardinal or Pope related (how cool would it be if there was a pope bird just like there is a cardinal bird?). Go are read some other angry Protestant who can comfortably make a criticism of something from an outsider’s point of view. Or maybe I will write about all that.

Someone asked me to share some thoughts on Mega churches. I suppose I could do that, but hasn’t that been covered ad nauseam by others who are bitter and angry because their church is struggling while the mega churches are growing? So I don’t think I really need to comment on that (how cool would it be if there were birds named mega church birds?). Or maybe I will write about all that.

How about instead I offer a comparison of the two and where they both have gone astray? If that isn’t arrogant and snobby I don’t know what is. And, this way I can do what I just said I wouldn’t do.

I have heard many say that a large part of the problem facing Catholicism is a reluctance to change or compromise in light of the modern world. For example:

Condoms can save lives (especially in AIDS torn countries), but it is a sin to go against “God’s will” and have protected sex (at least wear a helmet).

Women have proven themselves again and again to be very capable leaders who are called by God, but we could never break with tradition and let a woman actually fix many of the problems in the church.

The Holy Spirit can work from the bottom up, it can move for change through the people prior to the hierarchy/magisterium (as Liberation Theology argues), but we can’t trust such radical movements without any kind of control.

There was a time (1965) when a pastoral constitution from Catholicism claimed that the “hopes and joys of the world are the hopes and joys of the church” (Gaudium et Spes), but that does not seem to be the case today. It seems and feels like the leadership of Catholicism has dug in the fancy red-shoed heels to be a bulwark against the changing world so strong that the world may very well pass it by.

The Mega church model, on the other had, seems to be steeped in the notion that if you give the people what they want then they will come – thank you Rick Warren for that little nugget. People like television so show worship on the TV. People like big displays of fanfare and feeling good so make sure worship is big and makes people feel good no matter what. People like to sit at round tables, drink coffee, and be “relaxed” in worship so make sure you do that.

While Rick Warren and others say it is only the surface needs that you speak to and then you offer the Gospel, I would argue that the Gospel the majority of these churches is offering continues to be what people want.

People want answers so we tell them what to think.

People want to hear that everything is going to be ok and so we say it will be (as long as you give to the church).

People want to hear that they are blessed (financially) and we tell them that they will be (as long as they give to the church).

People want to be told how to live, how to act, and what to believe. 

See, Nietzsche and Marx were right.

There was a time when the strain of theology that you can usually find in the Mega church was found primarily in the smaller, rural churches that refused to cow-tow to the trends of society (read: modernity and liberalism). Now it seems that many of these churches are becoming so much like contemporary culture that the difference between a brand new school and a brand new church is that a church might have a cross displayed somewhere. Otherwise you may never be able to recognize the difference.

Granted I am slapping grand generalizations and I am sure people could say, “well my experience of Catholicism is different,” or “well my experience of a mega church is different.” I’m sure it is, but this is my blog so I can make my generalizations. Hah!

We need to find something in-between. I come from a classical liberal background (via Niebuhr, Tillich, etc.) – a background that was very good at bending to the will of culture. I am working to find a footing in the Gospel against the currents of the world. Yet I do not want to become so recalcitrant that I lose compassion, mercy, and love. It isn’t that the Gospel is changing, it is that our understanding of the Gospel and the way we engage the world as Christians is growing, maturing, and changing. This means that we all may find ourselves at a place where we are saying that we may have been wrong at one time or another (remember slavery?).

As ironic as it is that I am suggesting it, I believe that we need to have a lot of humility when we are trying to do church stuff. We need to have a lot of humility, a lot of honesty, and a lot of trust. Listen to people, listen to the Holy Spirit, listen to Scripture, listen to Christ, and then try to be a church. That is going to be a slow and sometimes painful process. Maybe that is why it takes churches so long to make decisions on things.